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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Darwinist attempts to revive spontaneous generation are on life support...and so are their just-so stories

So, news keeps on coming out that makes Darwinism look ridiculous. What happens to the people who hear these things? Why do they keep going when they hear such ridiculous proclamations as "Cancer may have been the cause of life" or "Stone tools may have formed the human hand"?

Okay, I am willing to believe that the dog might eat your homework. Maybe some rich official in Nigeria desperately needs me to help him bring 11 million dollars into the country. Maybe the girl you meet at the strip club is really into you and if you keep stuffing bills in her whatever-she-isn't wearing it will be true love. Maybe Abner Doubleday really did invent baseball. But did life invent itself? Nah.

Guess what? I could find a fantastic microscope and a micro-etcher and put "radar" on a grain of sand. Out of all the grains of sand in the entire world, that would be the only one with that name on it. There is sand on beaches and lakes and rivers and under the surface of the oceans and in backyard sandboxes - it is everywhere. Guess what? It would be more likely you could find that grain of sand on the first try than that life developed by itself. "75 with 17 zeros following" (7.5x10^18) is seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion." (wiki answers) So compare that to the odds against life forming. Then consider all the fantastic variety of creatures and plants that would also have to evolve against even more odds.

Last week we discussed how unlikely Planet Earth is. Every facet of our planet—its solar system, and its galaxy—makes life possible. Change anything, and our planet would be as lifeless as space is.
What about life itself? How did life come about? Could there be life elsewhere? NASA conducted an interesting study.They needed to know the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. Earth could not afford the danger if one of our space vehicles were to bring back a deadly microbe for which man had no resistance.

Here is how the probabilities theory works: you take a set of circumstances, and you scientifically determine the odds of a certain outcome. For instance, if you flip a coin, you have “even odds” of heads or tails. The more you flip it, the greater the odds are against it coming up “heads”

every time. Once you get to 1/1015, the probability of an event ever happening is negligible. If you get to 1/1050, the event could not have happened even once in 15 billion-years. After studying the complexity of a protein molecule, Dr. Morowitz concluded that the probability of life occurring by chance is 1/10236. 1/10236 takes into account all the atoms in the universe, and the chance that the right ones came together just once to form a protein molecule.

He said “The universe would have to be trillions of years older, and trillions of times larger, for a protein molecule to have occurred by random chance.”

It’s a bit like throwing 4 billion pennies into the air and having them all land heads-up. Evolutionists tell us that given enough time, this could happen. But as we just learned, there wasn’t enough time and there weren’t enough pennies. (This does not say that life does not exist elsewhere. It just says that it could not exist by random chance.)

The study reminds me of the joke about Neal Armstrong’s first moonwalk. About 100 feet from the Lunar Lander, Neal stooped down and picked up a Rolex watch lying on the moon’s surface. It even had the correct time. Armstrong frantically radioed Houston and asked, “What do we do now? The camera was on me when I picked up the watch! People will think that we weren’t first to the moon. They may even believe the Russians beat us here!” Houston radioed back, “Don’t worry. We already have a story that earth will believe. We’ll just tell them that the watch evolved on the moon!”

I enjoyed the movie “Contact” starring Jodi Foster. She played a SETI scientist. SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) uses an array of huge radio receivers that listen for “organized”
radio signals. If a signal is random static, it is natural. If it is organized, however, it was undoubtedly sent by an intelligent source. For instance, the signal “2 – 2 – 4″ (about 10 bytes of information) is intelligent. Although SETI has not yet heard any such signal in its 30 years, they keep listening.

By some stretch of logic, many of those same scientists say that a DNA molecule containing four billion bytes of perfectly arranged information did not come from a source of intelligence. It just “happened!”
Considering the odds against evolution being true, why is it so important to some folks that wedo believe in evolution? What does our belief in evolution make possible?

The discarding of “right and wrong.” If life is an accident of random atoms, does it really matter if a Boy Scout helps an elderly lady across the street or shoves her under a bus?

Abortion rights. If we are just an accident of physics, does it matter if we kill our preborn children? After all, they have no soul. They have no rights. They are just “tissue.” Call any Planned Parenthood abortuary to hear this firsthand.) Tell that to any expectant mother who has felt a kick, heard the heartbeat, or seen the sonogram.

The theory of evolution has put humanity on a slippery slope with no bottom. After all, if mankind becomes extinct through its own excesses, it’s all part of evolution. We just weren’t fit to survive.
Somehow, that last assumption seems logical. For if mankind clings to something so unproven, so impossible, and so destructive, perhaps “man wasn’t intelligent enough to survive.”
A fitting epitaph.

~~~~~~~

Consider that information has no natural source, that the Universe requires a First Cause and really think that through. Are you really willing to believe in Chance the Evolution Fairy when common sense tells you that you do not get something from nothing? Really? Darwinist blowhards erect facades of assertions that, like a general store in an old West town, are impressive from the front but in back they are just a one-story ramshackle building. Darwinism would be like the facade without even the building behind it. All show, no go!

Proteins are a very important component of the cell; in fact, they make up about 50% of the cell.

*Proteins are polymers made up of amino acid monomers

*The most important type of proteins are enzymes; enzymes regulate metabolism by acting as catalysts(chemical agents that selectively speed up chemical reactionsin the cell)

*Proteins consist of one or more polypeptides folded and coiled into specific conformations

Amino Acids are organic molecules that contain a carboxyl group and an amino group, as well as an R group (Variable Group), that gives each amino acid its identity and property. There are 20 amino acids that make up protein molecules. You should be able to recognize from their names that they are amino acids, because most amino acids end in –ine. Ex: Glycine, Glutamine..."

I would ask that you read that entire post, which is a simplified explanation about these "simple" things that are by no means simple. Then do a bit of thinking?

by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Where did the first living cell come from? According to The Independent, Charles Darwin "was flummoxed by the ultimate mystery of mysteries: what led to the origin of life itself?"1

Since Darwin's time, his naturalistic followers have been diligently seeking the answer. During a recent conference at Arizona State University, a collection of scientists discussed this very question. By the end of the discussion, the answer was clear—they don't know.

"Geologists, chemists, astronomers and biologists are as stumped as ever by the riddle of life," wrote Scientific American blogger John Horgan.2ICR News has reported on more than a dozen recent failures by origin of life researchers to produce a naturalistic answer.3 And this giant void in evolutionary history had some of the researchers entertaining the non-explanation "that life originated elsewhere and floated here through space."4

Of course, this would solve nothing, since life would not only have had to evolve elsewhere (with, no doubt, the same or similar obstacles it would have faced here), but it would also have been required to endure the tough trek through space to earth. Ironically, other headlines issued during the same week of science news suggested that scientists are making real progress on the matter of naturalistic life origins. But the details, however, show just the opposite.

For example, a Discovery News headline read, "Life Elements Came from Space."5 It reported on research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which found that ammonia can be produced by crushing and heating a certain kind of meteorite under high pressure.6 The study's authors referred to their meteorite-derived, nitrogen-rich ammonia to suggest that ancient meteorites seeded an imaginary ancient earth with enough nitrogen to build proteins and DNA.

But if one were to grant that meteorites could have been exposed to the requisite high heat and pressure to have formed ammonia, what would have kept that same heat and pressure from destroying other fledgling biomolecules? And even with all the proper building materials made available, any complicated machine always needs an intelligent builder to construct it according to the necessary blueprints.

Plus, ammonia is tiny, made only of one nitrogen atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms. Its small size does not compare with the immense bulk of individual proteins and DNA, which are required for life. Thus, it is far too small to carry the information required for life. A collection of ammonia molecules is to a living cell what scattered broken nails are to a city.

Similarly, a recent feature in New Scientist favorably compared the way that cells function to the way that mixtures of oil drops and tar coalesce, claiming it could be a way in which conditions might have been "just right" for life to form.7 The comparison ignores the basic fact that oil blobs have none of the defining characteristics of life, including metabolism and reproduction. These are achieved through internal ingenious biochemistry, which is utterly absent from all tarry residues.

Whereas the tarry goo project and the PNAS ammonia research led by Arizona State's Sandra Pizzarello purported to offer some hope for a naturalistic explanation for how life began, the Arizona State conference of leading experts apparently accurately summarized the sad state of origin of life experiments. But it seems clear that none of the scientists from these groups have been asking the right questions.

To ask "what chemicals and conditions led to the formation of the first cell" presumes that cells can be made merely with chemicals and conditions. This presumption has been proven false, since cells also contain a vast store of information―an entity that is not a property of any chemical. And since science has proven that cells contain information, which has so far been found in the DNA and splicing codes,8 one wonders why origin of life researchers have not appropriately shifted their research question to "Could any combination of chemicals and conditions ever lead to a cell?"

In his Scientific American blog, author John Horgan wrote:

Creationists are no doubt thrilled that origin-of-life research has reached such an impasse...but they shouldn't be. Their explanations suffer from the same flaw: What created the divine Creator? And at least scientists are making an honest effort to solve life's mystery instead of blaming it all on God.2

But this reasoning commits just as sophomoric an error as the claim that ammonia from a precisely treated meteorite somehow helps an "origin of life by nature" scenario. Only finite "creators," like humans, have beginnings. The "divine Creator" had no beginning, by very definition. If this were not so, then the world would not exist, since it must have begun at some point and could not have caused itself.9

And at least scientists who take the Bible seriously are honest enough to follow the experimental evidence where it leads, even when it is against a nature-only model and strongly for a supernatural origin for life.10

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on March 11, 2011.

Assessing Evolutionary Explanations 03/11/2011 March 11, 2011 — No matter the biological discovery, evolutionists are ready with their explanations. The explanations, however, are often riddled with puzzles, surprises, and seemingly arbitrary appeals to chance. Do such explanations really provide more understanding than those of creationists, who explain that living things were designed for a purpose?

Shrimp deal: “Many deep-sea species have close relatives living in shallow, relatively warm water, but how shallow-water species were initially able to cope with the huge hydrostatic pressures of the deep ocean is poorly understood,” said a researcher at the University of Southampton. According to PhysOrg, the team studied closely-related shrimp that live in shallow waters and near deep-sea vents – environments with astonishing differences in pressure and temperature.
The observations merely demonstrated that these shrimp can live in either environment. Their evolutionary explanation had to invoke an unobserved ancestor: “These physiological capabilities were probably inherited from an ancestral species shared by both shallow-water and related vent species.”
The explanation, however, begs the question of how the putative ancestor gained the ability to survive both environments in the first place. And if the living species have that ability, what has been explained? Evolutionary theory appears to be a superfluous appendage to an observation that the shrimp are designed to survive in a wide variety of conditions.

Hunt for and gather a story: We have a mystery. “One of the most complex human mysteries involves how and why we became an outlier species in terms of biological success” – particularly, why are human hunter-gatherer cultures so different from those of other primates?PhysOrg again came to the rescue to explain the mystery and deliver understanding, this time from scientists at the University of Arizona “who study hunter-gatherer societies”. The article promised their work is “informing the issue by suggesting that human ancestral social structure may be the root of cumulative culture and cooperation and, ultimately, human uniqueness.”
Clearly humans had ancestors, and some of them hunted and gathered – as some cultures do today. At first glance this explanation (actually just a suggestion) seems like a tautology; early humans had a unique ancestral social structure that gave birth to a modern unique social structure. The ASU team, intent on deriving human uniqueness from other primates, studied 32 modern foraging tribes, and found the obvious: they identified “human hunter-gatherer group structure as unique among primates.”
But how did they get that way? That’s the evolutionary question. “The increase in human network size over other primates may explain why humans evolved an emphasis on social learning that results in cultural transmission,” Professor Kim Hill offered. “Likewise, the unique composition of human ancestral groups promotes cooperation among large groups of non-kin, something extremely rare in nature.” Humans are unique because they evolved to be unique. Is that what he just said?

The hand is quicker than the stone: “Stone Tools Influenced Hand Evolution in Human Ancestors, Anthropologists Say.” That’s a headline on Science Daily that claims research at University of Kent “confirmed Charles Darwin’s speculation that the evolution of unique features in the human hand was influenced by increased tool use in our ancestors.” But did the tools shape the hand, or did the hand shape the tools?
Here’s the data: “Research over the last century has certainly confirmed the existence of a suite of features in the bones and musculature of the human hand and wrist associated with specific gripping and manipulatory capabilities that are different from those of other extant great apes.” Then, the explanation: “These features have fuelled suggestions that, at some point since humans split from the last common ancestor of living apes, the human hand evolved away from features adapted for locomotion toward alternative functions.”
A creationist reading this is going to reject the assumption that humans split from a common ancestor. What can evolutionists argue as evidence for their view? One of the them at U of Kent put forward the possibility that the human hand “may have been subject to natural selection as a result of using simple cutting tools.” But why would a primate use tools without the equipment to do it? And what about a stone causes a hand to evolve? New Caledonian crows have probably been using tools longer than evolutionists think humans have, but their beaks do not appear to be changing much from those of other birds (see 05/26/2009 and links).
Somehow, their “may have” suggestion evolved into a triumph for Darwin:

Dr [Stephen] Lycett, Senior Lecturer in Human Evolution at the University’s School of Anthropology and Conservation, explained: ‘140 years ago, writing from his home at Down House in Kent, Darwin proposed that the use of stone tools may have influenced the evolution of human hands.
‘Our research suggests that he was correct. From a very early stage in our evolution, the cultural behaviour of our ancestors was influencing biological evolution in specific ways.’

Did the cultural behavior influence the evolution of the hand, or did the hand influence the cultural behavior? Or did both evolve together? In any of these cases, it is not clear that the observations about the uniqueness of the human hand have been explained at all.

Progress in size: Researchers at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center have convinced themselves that “Evolution Drives Many Plants and Animals to Be Bigger, Faster,” reported Science Daily. The challenge, though, is whether they could convince a nonbeliever in evolution with their explanation.
“Organisms with bigger bodies or faster growth rates tend to live longer, mate more and produce more offspring, whether they are deer or damselflies, the authors report.” So far, a correlation between size and fecundity is all they’ve served up. Whether lizards, snakes, insects and plants, the organisms in their sample of 100 species (as found in the literature on natural selection) displayed a “very widespread pattern” appearing to support the claim that “larger body size and earlier seasonal timing – such as earlier breeding, blooming or hatching – confer significant survival advantages.”
Questions arise immediately from this explanation, though: why doesn’t every animal and plant evolve to get bigger and faster over time? And why were so many extinct species much larger than their modern counterparts? If a prey animal gets bigger, but its predator simultaneously grows bigger and faster, has the prey animal won any survival advantage? (see “Slippage on the treadmill,” 03/17/2003). Another question: why don’t animals converge on a Goldilocks model – a medium size? The authors themselves were puzzled by that. “If organisms are supposedly well-adapted to their particular circumstances, then why is it so seldom the case that the individuals that survive and reproduce the best are the ones that are not too small, nor too big, but just right?”
Their initial explanation, therefore, required several auxiliary explanations. “The authors explored three possible explanations,” they said: (1) size is costly, (2) environments fluctuate (think Darwin’s finches), and (3) “A third possibility is that natural selection drives one trait in one direction, while simultaneously driving another, genetically correlated trait in the opposite direction.” Perhaps this could be dubbed the “House divided against itself cannot evolve” theory.
The problem with composite explanations, though, is figuring which one is the right one. If your doctor tells you your weight gain is caused by (1) lack of self-control, (2) genes, or (3) cancer, you would demand to know which one matters most. Composite explanations, further, violate Ockham’s Razor (see Ockham, Jan 2010 Scientist of the Month). Unless evolutionists come forward with a primary cause for the effect that can also explain the exceptions, it seems doubtful they’ve explained anything.

Your inner tumor: Surely one of the most bizarre explanations offered by evolutionists recently is in the title of a story on New Scientist: “Tumours could be the ancestors of animals.” According to writer Colin Barras, this is “the idea that cancer is our most distant animal ancestor, a ‘living fossil’ from over 600 million years ago.” According Barras, Charles Lineweaver and Paul Davies have put forward the notion that “cancer is not simply linked to the evolution of animals – it was the earliest animals.”
As justification, the evolutionists showcased a tumor’s ability to evade the immune system and to generate blood vessels (angiogenesis). Understandably, though, “Reactions to Lineweaver and Davies’s idea vary from cautious enthusiasm to outright scepticism,” one calling it an “imaginative metaphor,” another, “a step too far.” “There is no evidence to believe that the ability to develop blood vessels is an ancient feature of animals,” a critic said.
In response, Lineweaver used evolution to justify evolution: “Fully developed angiogenesis had to have evolved from proto-angiogenesis,” he said. “I think it’s clear that some form of proto-angiogenesis was very important for the earliest animals.” How or why “proto-angiogenesis” (whatever that is) would have evolved in some unobserved ancestor incapable of understanding why it would be “very important” some day is left as an exercise in imaginative metaphor.

In the heady days of logical positivism (around the 1930s), Carl Hempel attempted to eliminate anecdotal explanations in science and replace them with deductive logic. To him, it was essential for an explanation to refer to natural laws and initial conditions such that the result had to happen. Subsequent philosophers have undermined that vision. Hempel’s “covering law model” leaves out too many favored explanations, and simultaneously legitimizes some quack explanations. His model left biologists with “physics envy,” because clear laws of nature are hard to come by in biology. There are too many variables and complexities to be able to predict or retrodict events in natural history with deductive logic appealing to laws of nature.
Nevertheless, it would appear desirable that scientific explanations aspire to more than ad hoc stories, complex explanations requiring multiple auxiliary hypotheses, composite explanations, mere suggestions, or tautologies (such as “things are as they are because they were as they were” – an explanation that works in reverse just as well). If the evolutionary explanation reduces to “stuff happens,” or things evolve because they evolve, then alternatives like intelligent design would seem to have grounds for competing in the marketplace of explanation.

The Darwin Storytelling Empire is a corrupt racket. It’s long overdue to expose their pretensions to providing superior scientific explanations. That’s why you read Creation-Evolution Headlines. All the other clueless news media just parrot the myths emanating from the clueless Darwinists, with no critical analysis whatsoever, thinking they have done their job. Their product is as empty as a balloon held aloft by hot fogma. (For definition of fogma, see the 05/14/2007 commentary).
What about science in general? In the late 20th century after logical positivism collapsed, philosophers of science were left wondering if scientific explanation was even possible. Some, like van Fraassen, concluded that explanation was not even the business of science. Describing useful patterns in experience in more and more detail was sufficient, he said; leave explanation to others, because it gets into metaphysics. But where does that leave the presumed epistemic superiority of science over the humanities, philosophy, or even theology? Why should science get an elevated status in the academy and popular culture if it cannot explain why the world is the way it is?
The key insight that undermines the Darwin explanatory program is that explanation requires presuppositions in the conceptual realm: the need for knowledge, truth, ethics, honesty, logic, universality and consistency. None of those things can be derived from evolutionary naturalism. When you hear an evolutionist assuming any of these things, you know he or she is cheating. Theology provides the only grounds for reasoning toward true truth about a real reality. When enough people employ the two-pronged attack on Darwinism (exposing their vacuous explanations and their pilfering of theological presuppositions), there may be hope of toppling the corrupt Darwin Storytelling regime (12/22/2003 commentary). Next headline on:Marine Biology • Early Man • Darwin and Evolution • Dumb Ideas • Philosophy of Science

On the Horizon
Gear up for messages from Mercury. The MESSENGER spacecraft is nearing its orbit insertion on March 17. The science phase begins April 4. Given the surprises from the first three flybys (07/09/2008, 06/11/2009 bullet 1, 10/04/2009 bullet 12, 07/29/2010 bullet 2), we can expect more amazing images and puzzling phenomena. Live Science posted an interview with Sean Solomon, mission director, about what the team hopes to learn from the first orbital mission of the innermost planet.

21 comments:

"Last week we discussed how unlikely Planet Earth is. Every facet of our planet—its solar system, and its galaxy—makes life possible"

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in; fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well! It must have been made to have me in it!" (Douglas Adams)

Not terrible as a zinger ... but it helps when the zinger is true. Dawkins writes science -- sometimes not very good, perhaps, but science nonetheless. And the late and much-missed Mr. Adams was also an occasional science writer. He wrote a book called Last Chance to See about his trips to various faraway places to see some of the rarest interesting animals on earth -- the mountain gorilla, Komodo dragon lizard, kakapo, Yangtze River dolphin, and more. One of the finest books I've ever read on naturewatching, and on the pitfalls therein for the unwary.

I was fortunate to have a father who was a world traveler and who brought home all sorts of pictures and objects from all over the planet. He tried to visit the sites of many of Richard Haliburton's adventures when he could, although mountain climbing was not dad's cup of tea. Haliburton's books are from another world now, most of them written before WWII. I do not remember which books we had. I read them all but they were sold off in later years when he had a heart attack and had to retire young, I believe.

Haliburton's stories did inspire me to do some mountain climbing and to explore the wildest areas of those places I would find myself in during my younger days. Standing atop a mountain is exhilarating stuff! Finding yourself so far out that there is no trace of humanity (wires, trash, footpaths, etc.) is a bit like being an explorer in a new land. Is it possible I have been the only human in some way-out area of the Rockies or Sierra Nevadas? Unlikely. But it was awesome at the time.

Richard Dawkins may write "science" but he also writes ridiculous philosophical clap trap and its hilarious watching him get shredded nearly every time he enters a debate over the existence of God. He should stick to science.

"Because, after all, anonymous is the seat of all knowledge and wisdom?

I love how Darwinists have absolutely no EVIDENCE, just opinions but summarily dismiss the opinions of others..."

without giving cause as to why I might add. Dawkins arguments against the existence of God are infantile as far as I'm concerned until someone shows cause why I'm wrong. They can't admit they're just insulted someone has that opinion and their announcing to the world they are dismissing it is just a pathetic and childish attempt at getting under someone's skin.

"Because - if I recall correctly - you stated in the past that you really hadn't taken any side, and that the whole subject was of no importance to you.

Yet here you are, rooting for Radar as it seems, and attacking Darwinists. Wondering if you had chosen a side..."

You are correct, I have no emotional attachment to the outcome of the YEC/OEC debate and don't really have a side. I also haven't attacked any Darwinists here (at least not for being Darwinists) so I fail to see what point you think you're making. My remarks toward Dawkins are in regards to his philosophical arguments against the existence of God, which has nothing to do with him being a Darwinist. I pointed this out quite clearly.

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The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.Francis Maitland Balfour